Australia: US vetting of Pacific island refugees nearly done

Dutton declined to outline any details of that process or say when the first refugees were likely to leave the islands. Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump berated Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during their first telephone conversation as national leaders in January over the deal which Trump described in a tweet as “dumb.”

Trump said the refugees would be subjected to “extreme vetting” before they were accepted. There are few details on what that would entail.

U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence assured Turnbull during a visit to Australia in April that the Trump administration will honour the deal, but “that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement.”

Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul, an Australia-based advocate, said he had been told that U.S. officials had interviewed around 600 asylum seekers and conducted more than 200 medical examinations on Nauru. They had interviewed 300 at the men-only facility at Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and completed 70 medical examinations, he said.

“We are getting close to some people being taken from Nauru,” Rintoul said.

Australia will not settle any refugees who try to arrive by boat — a policy that the government says dissuades asylum seekers from attempting the dangerous and occasionally deadly ocean crossing from Indonesia. Australia instead pays Papua New Guinea and Nauru to house asylum seekers in camps that have been plagued by reports of abuse and draconian conditions.

Australia last week reached a settlement of 90 million Australian dollars ($68 million) with more than 1,900 asylum seekers who sued over their treatment on Manus Island.

Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Australia: US vetting of Pacific island refugees nearly done

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